


The Light of Stars is So Damn Stark

by HamsterMasterSamster



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Mass Effect 2, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Romantic Fluff, Sole Survivor (Mass Effect)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-23
Updated: 2018-06-23
Packaged: 2019-05-27 09:14:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15021425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HamsterMasterSamster/pseuds/HamsterMasterSamster
Summary: Shepard could write the book on traumatic events, but there's one she can never quite manage to bury deep enough. Abandoned by most of her allies and trapped working with an enemy she despises, she doesn't have many places left to turn to support.Fortunately, he happens to be pretty good at it.





	The Light of Stars is So Damn Stark

**Author's Note:**

> This longer-than-intended fanfic drabble came to me after completing Grunt’s loyalty mission in ME2, and takes place thereabouts. Shepard/Garrus pre-romantic fluff, with title taken from a Dean Koontz poem in a book called, relevantly, ‘Sole Survivor’ :3
> 
> (I gave my Shepard all the traumatising backstory options because _fight me_ )

Garrus had never seen it before.

That brief widening of her eyes when the ground quaked.  Her fingers tightening convulsively around the grip of her sniper rifle. The tight jaw clench and dry swallow when the damn thing’s head lurched up out of the scorched Tuchankan earth and _screamed_ at them.

Then it was lost to the frenzy of battle. Between Grunt’s gleeful battle roars, the deafening hail of gunfire and that familiar, unfaltering staccato of Shepard’s powerful Widow rifle, Garrus promptly forgot about it. She seemed okay, after all, a cloaked shimmer always at the periphery of his senses, meticulously lining up her shots and dancing across the battlefield with a grace that - heh - didn’t seem to extend to any dancefloor in the known galaxy. And they brought the unexpected bastard down, and she couldn’t help but smile at Grunt’s glowing, toothy grin, and they toasted victory with Wrex before they left, and …

He must have imagined it. He put it out of mind.

Hours later and it came back to him when he left the elevator on the crew deck and caught a glimpse of her, stumbling into starboard observation with a hunched gait and a stifled, choking groan. Garrus took two startled steps toward her - and stopped dead. If she wanted _help_ , she would have run _toward_ the mess. But Garrus recalled that look in her eye as they had stared down that thresher maw and he started again, moving until the door irised open and he was standing upon the threshold.

The vast, twinkling void of space loomed in the unshuttered ceiling-to-floor viewport. Shepard had thrown herself at the base and pressed her cheek against the screen, her hyperventilating breaths misting up the view in frenetic bursts. One fist was punched against her chest, as though she could command it to do her bidding just like any other obstacle that was stupid enough to stand in her way.

“Shepard … ”

Garrus found himself awkwardly stuck for words. 

“Not a good time,” she choked out between desperate gulps of air.

“Yeaaaah. I can see that. ” Garrus dared to take that last, casual step into the room proper.  "I think that’s probably why I should stick around.“

The door whirred closed behind him, cutting off the social hum of the crew deck and leaving them alone with the silent starfield. Shepard stared at him out of the corner of a hazy eye, but only for a second; she was turning that indomitable focus back to her breathing, every muscle drawn taut. It was a different kind of combat. Garrus approached the window - not too close, though, didn’t want to crowd her - and lowered himself into a crouch.

"I should get the Doctor -”

“ _No_.” Shepard’s hand shot out and wrenched his arm, her grip surprisingly ironclad for someone coming down from a panic attack. She continued to squeeze it while she breathed, however, and Garrus stayed put. It felt right, and besides … he didn’t fancy his chances keeping his arm attached at the shoulder if he tried to disengage. 

One minute, two … Eventually Shepard’s breathing settled down into something approaching her usual steady pace, and she released him from his duty, slumping tiredly at the base of the viewport.

Another minute passed, this one in silence. Garrus spent a little of it flexing his hand to reinstate the circulation in his arm, but the urge to break it scratched at him something fierce.

He didn’t need to ask, though. He’d connected the dots already.

“Akuze.”

Shepard grimaced, and though she was staring wearily ahead, she gave a tight little nod. “Akuze.”

“We’ve faced thresher maws before.”

She sighed, a residual tremor still riding each breath, and scraped back her fingers through her dark, sweaty hair. “I don’t know what to tell you, Garrus. Most of the time, it’s fine. Other times … sights, sounds, feelings just click together and pull a trigger somewhere. Maybe it’s worse on foot, out in the open like that. Liked it better with the walls of the Mako between us and their ugly faces.” 

Shepard suddenly thumped the screen, her voice turning hot with anger. “Or _maybe_ it’s having no choice but to play nice with the murdering bastards who set a pack of _thresher maws_ on my unit, because they happen to be the only group in the galaxy not burying their head in the sand when it comes to the Reapers.”

Oh, yeah, _that_. He supposed that might do it. Nothing Garrus could possibly say would untangle that thorny problem of conscience, but … What the hell. He was here now. Might as well commit.

Garrus shifted and joined Shepard on the floor, squaring his back against the window. “I guess this is the point where I ask if you want to talk about it, right?” he said with mock-exasperation. He was rewarded with a fleeting smile that cast something warm into the pit of his stomach, but Shepard didn’t seem about to add anything else, so he continued: “It’s funny - well, not funny-haha, more … . funny-what-an-asshole-the-universe-is. But, all the horrors we’ve seen since, you’d think facing husks and Reapers and rachni might have taken the place of a few lil’ old maws by now.”

Shepard frowned. “I know. We’ve seen worse than most. But Akuze is always there. It always will be. It keeps getting buried under layers and layers more of … ” She waved a hand around, at everything and nothing, at _this_ , and for all the ambiguity he knew exactly what she meant. “But sometimes it just burrows its way back up. Huh.” A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. “Not unlike a maw, I guess. Besides, Akuze was .  . . different.” 

The fledgling smile fled, chased away by shadows. “I was young. We were unprepared, under-resourced. It was dark when they attacked, and we had no idea what we were facing.”

Garrus laughed, a brusque huff of air. “I don’t know, Shepard. Sounds pretty much the same to me.”

His tone was light and sardonic, but it didn’t elicit the usual chuckle from Shepard. Instead, she pressed her lips together in a hard, thin line. “Right now? This is war and it has direction, even if we don’t fully understand all of it yet. Akuze wasn’t war. It wasn’t even a fight. It was a _massacre_. And it was the first time I realised -”

She cut herself off, mouth tightening and head turning evasively away. Garrus found himself leaning in closer.

“Realised what?”

For the first time, Shepard seemed genuinely unsettled. She hunched her shoulders and fidgeted, arms folded almost defensively across her knees. A laugh escaped her, but it was self-deprecating. “It’s stupid, I - I don’t know if I can explain it. I don’t believe in destiny, Garrus, but  . . sometimes I feel like something has it out for me. I’m never allowed to be a part of anything. As soon as I get too damned comfortable, forces beyond my control single me out, tear me away. Isolate me. You _know_ what happened on Mindoir, and for years I thought I was the only survivor of Akuze. I was the only right-minded person who saw what was in that Beacon on Eden Prime, and the burden of proof was all on me. I was the only human Spectre. And whatever wanted me back from the dead decided to let Cerberus do it, so that I was alone again.” Shepard’s eyes narrowed, momentarily unguarded and transparent, and Garrus could see the depth of sheer _hurt_ that lurked there. “Everyone I ever knew or trusted turned their back on me in a heartbeat.”

“Not _everyone_ ,” he emphasised immediately. That brought a smile to her face, and a sideways look at him with softer eyes that lingered there, entirely unabashed. The opposite of Garrus, in fact, who cleared his throat and awkwardly glanced away. “Though when you put it that way, I suppose it does sound a little like some grand design,” he admitted. “Crazier things have happened. But maybe, just maybe … you’re interpreting it the wrong way.”

One eyebrow twitched. “That so?”

“I’ve seen you in action, Shepard. You don’t get pushed and pulled - you’re the force that pushes and pulls. You don’t get dragged kicking and screaming out of your comfort zone - you rise to occasions nobody else could. You just . . . Well. You stand out in a crowd.”

He coughed. That had sounded better in his head. But a quick glance confirmed Shepard was still smiling, perhaps even a little more than before, so … damage mitigated? That rare aura of vulnerability and despair that had briefly consumed her was rapidly dissolving - so much so that after a few seconds of appreciative silence, she gave him an affectionate sledgehammer of a punch in the arm.

“Good talk, Vakarian. Almost made me blush that time.” For all the bravado in her voice, the hand she placed on his shoulder as she rose to her feet was gentle and sincere. It turned his legs into uncooperative foreign objects, and left him with little else to do but gaze up at her like an idiot. This woman had saved him on Omega - from more than just death - and even before that he had given her his unfaltering trust. Because you _could_ trust Shepard. Alliance or Cerberus or, hell, even ‘human’ … the Commander was so much bigger than the wrapper she came in. There was no label or authority in the galaxy that could contain her.

“Guess I should try harder next time,” Garrus countered, once she had removed her hand and he was no longer held immobile by the electric shock of her touch.

Commander Shepard had already started walking toward the door, as if her moment of weakness had never even happened - but at his reply, she turned and considered this with a thoughtful twitch of a smile.

“I’d like that.”


End file.
